f the fair
lady celebrated, I believe, by Petrarch, but I quote from memory:

"Mrs. Gill is very ill,
Nothing can improve her,
But to see the Tuillerie,
And waddle through the Louvre."

None of these, I believe, however good and valid reasons in themselves,
were the moving powers upon the present occasion; the all-sufficient one
being that Mrs. Bingham had a daughter. Now Miss Bingham was Dublin too
--but Dublin of a later edition--and a finer, more hot-pressed copy than
her mamma. She had been educated at Mrs. Somebody's seminary in
Mountjoy-square--had been taught to dance by Montague--and had learned
French from a Swiss governess--with a number of similar advantages
--a very pretty figure--dark eyes--long eye-lashes and a dimple--and last,
but of course least, the deserved reputation of a large fortune. She had
made a most successful debut in the Dublin world, where she was much
admired and flattered, and which soon suggested to her quick mind, as it
has often done in similar cases to a young provincial debutante, not to
waste her "fraicheur" upon the minor theatres, but at once to appear upon
the "great boards;" so far evidencing a higher flight of imagination
and enterprise than is usually found among the clique of her early
associates, who may be characterized as that school of young ladies,
who like the "Corsair" and Dunleary, and say, "ah don't!"

She possessed much more common sense than her mamma, and promised under
proper advantages to become speedily quite sufficiently acquainted with
the world and its habitudes. In the meanwhile, I perceived that she ran
a very considerable risque of being carried off by some mustachoed Pole,
with a name like a sneeze, who might pretend to enjoy the entree into the
fashionable circles of the continent.

Very little study of my two fair friends enabled me to see thus much; and
very little "usage" sufficed to render me speedily intimate with both;
the easy bonhommie of the mamma, who had a very methodistical
appreciation of what the "connexion" call "creature comforts," amused me
much, and opened one ready path to her good graces by the opportunity
afforded of getting up a luncheon of veal cutlets and London porter, of
which I partook, not a little to the evident loss of the fair daughter's
esteem.

While, therefore, I made the tour of the steward's cell in search of
Harvey's sauce,